CreateTrips ends after founder split, TripElite emerges from ashes

Here is an example that perhaps says something about how easy it is to create a trip planning app, and yet how hard they are to make work.

TripElite is a new mobile app that - as many will have heard before - acts as a "concierge in your pocket. helping you find your way at any destination in the world".

The app's apparent point of difference is that it is targeting high-end travellers - those looking for things at the luxurious point of the scale when it comes to hotels, restaurants, etc.

It has offline maps, GPS-led directions and navigation, bookmarking tools and the usual mounds of content, including guides and photos.

TripElite's description could read similarly to countless other destination guides and trip planning apps that have come and gone before it - one where the founders have also talked up the enthusiasm and hard work that has gone into running it.

This effort, as one of its creator admits, is "just a weekend project".

Perhaps the reason why is that Juha-Petteri Kukkonen has been there before and has bigger fish to fry these days.

The Finnish entrepreneur was one of the founding team behind CreateTrips, a fairly well-backed mobile travel planning startup from late-2013 that has ceased official operations in recent weeks.

Kukkonen recently emailed the CreateTrips database to notify them of its demise and mention the emergence of TripElite, the side-job he now has alongside vice president duties at the family dairy distribution business Kaslink and as an angel investor in five other startups.

His three other founders have since gone on to work in a creative agency, a new startup and a return to the world of travel blogging.